Eat similar meals every day. "I pretty much eat the same thing, or substitutions that are very close to my normal meal plan, every day," Yobe says of her daily food intake, which includes a protein bar before her morning workout, a protein shake afterward, and two meals including chicken or fish, veggies like a green salad or bok choy, and a carb like rice, pasta, or potatoes. She also snacks on rice cakes with peanut butter, carrots, celery, and nuts. Although she admits this can be boring, the approach makes it easier for her to get all the nutrients she needs while remaining satisfied throughout the day. To do it: Kneel with your elbows bent under your shoulders on top of a stability ball. Draw your abs in tight, keep your weight in your arms (chest lifted off the ball), and extend both legs out straight behind you, feet about hip-width apart. Maintain a straight line from your head, shoulders, hips, knees, and feet. Once you are stabilized on the ball, slowly roll the ball away from your body to increase the lever length and add stress on the abdominal region. For safety, go slowly and start with short movements in and out for 10-15 reps. When you feel ready, you can progress how far away you reach and your number of reps, Richey says.

If you're taking on healthy fitness and eating habits with the dream of achieving a six-pack, some real talk for you: "Very few people can achieve this look, regardless of what they do," says Stephen Ball, professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri. "Most women who make this their goal will fail and ultimately give up on exercise all together." Way harsh, Tai.

Spend a lot of money on expensive supplements and food — There are plenty of (rather expensive) supplements like plant protein powders and vegetarian meal replacement shakes. You might have to substitute more of solid food for these supplements to hit your ideal macro goals. As a vegetarian, you’re also not going to get in a lot of BCAAs through food so you might have to supplement with them separately. I’m not the one to tell you whether this is a good idea or not. If you can afford purchasing fancy food and supplements frequently, up to you.
"My goals six years ago was to 'get abs' and I used to think cardio and crunches would get me there. But it wasn’t until I started lifting weights and varying my abdominal exercises that I started to see a major change. You don’t realize how much you use your core muscles in order to perform powerful rapid movements like deadlifts!" — Shante Franca, @shantefranca
Start in a side plank with left forearm on floor, elbow under shoulder, feet stacked, and hips lifted so body forms one long, straight line. Stretch right arm up to ceiling. This is your starting position. Draw the right hand down and reach it below left underarm as you curl upper body forward so shoulders are parallel to floor. Return to starting position. Repeat for 30 seconds on each side. Thankfully, if you’re already reasonably fit, just a few tweaks to your routine here, a few modifications to your diet there, and you’ll be well on your way to shredded stomach glory. To that end, we’ve gathered up the best tips and tricks—expert-approved advice to ensure that, in no time, you’ll have the sculpted abs of your dreams. And for some core-specific moves, check out The Best Workouts For Getting That Summer Six-Pack. “The bird dog forces you to keep your core stiff,” says Jack. “Lifting your knees off the ground just a couple of inches—as you do in this exercise—makes it even more challenging to keep your torso still as you switch arms and legs.” That means your hips and lower-back muscles, obliques, rectus abdominis (also known as the six-pack muscles) are working together to keep your spine stable.
Do it: With your feet shoulder-width apart, lift a barbell off the rig, centering it evenly across your shoulders. (This version of the squat targets the core, not the legs, and so you should be using far less weight than you would for a traditional back squat.) Send your glutes back like you’re lowering into a chair, bending at the knees as deeply as possible. Press through your heels to return to the starting position for one rep. Do 12 reps for one set. Before you launch into the advanced ab workout, you will want to ease into it with some basic core exercises to warm up the abdominal muscles. The Plank is a great way to begin. The plank provides a simple and effective core warm-up because engages all the muscles of the core from your toes up to your head. Holding the plank requires the activation of all the major ab muscles as well as many stabilizer muscles that are often ignored.

Now you can shred your abs like a skier shreds the slopes, with the dumbbell skier swing. Gaddour took the typical form a downhill skier uses when flying down the face of a mountain, and combined it with the action of a kettlebell swing. The combination results in a superfast exercise that simultaneously torches fat, builds explosive strength, and works your entire core from your shoulders to your hips.

When it comes to building a six-pack, many guys don’t think to work any muscles outside of their core. But, to uncover your abs, you need to train your whole body, especially your legs. “Some of the largest and most metabolically consuming muscles in our body are in our hips and legs,” Cary says. “Work your lower body by doing squats, lunges, and dead lifts.” If you can work to engage your core during all of these exercises, even better.
Most people only associate weight training with building muscle. However, if you want to maximize fat loss then you’ve got to workout with weights at least three times a week! Weight training requires a lot of energy and therefore burns a lot of calories and fat. It also builds muscle and as a result increases metabolic rate. Weight training workouts also increase the ‘after burn.’ The after burn simply refers to the calories you continue to burn the time period after you’ve finished your workout. So, for several hours after a weight-training workout you actually continue to burn an increased amount of calories. For these reasons, it’s important to make sure you hit the weights on a regular basis.
The Single Leg Bridge Exercise is a good way to wrap up your core workout in order to keep your core strong and balanced. The single leg bridge is a bit more challenging than the basic bridge exercise. It targets and strengthen the gluteus maximus and hamstrings, but done properly, it is also a terrific core strengthening exercise that targets the posterior chain and the back of the body. To do it: Start with feet in a wide stance, knees bent, arms up on guard. Keeping your lower body still, quickly lean your upper body to the right, then come back through the center and lean to the left. Repeat lean back to the right. Next, lower your upper body, from the right around to the left side, making a half circle with your torso. Return to start position. That’s one rep. (Tip: it helps to keep a steady rhythm with this move, think—or say aloud—1, 2, 3, weave to help you keep your tempo). Repeat 10 times total, alternating starting on the right and left sides. Why it made the list: There are many reasons to like leg raise variations, but one is their scalability. You can start doing bent knee raises in the Roman chair or ab straps to focus on the lower core, work up to straight leg raises, and then move to a hanging bar. By the time you can do full straight-leg toes-to-bar raises, your entire core will have strength for days.
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To do it: Stand with your feet planted 3-4 feet apart, toes slightly turned out, hands on your hips. Lower into a plie by bending your knees out over your toes and lowering your hips directly underneath your shoulders. Then, as your straighten back up, slowly lift the right knee up towards the right shoulder. As you go back into the plie, slowly return the foot to the floor. Be sure to move at a very controlled pace to really engage the obliques the entire time—on the way up and on the way down. Do 10 repetitions on the right side, then another 10 repetitions on the left side for a total of 20.

In your workout: Regularly implement both back and front squats into your program. To keep it from becoming mundane, you can rotate through them in four-week waves, or alternate weeks between back and fronts. It's best to do your focused ab training on a day after your heavy training days for the week. The last thing you want is residual soreness that forces you to decrease the weight on the bar.

When you're doing exercises to strengthen these muscles, think of the abs and core as one unit. Even when you do exercises that recruit more of one muscle than the others (for example, side planks that really fire up the obliques), you'll notice that you still have to engage your entire midsection to do them right, which is proof that these muscles are never working completely alone. It's important to show equal love to all of the muscles of the core so that this unit can power itself properly from all angles.

6. Seek guidance from experts. As with many health issues, getting assistance from experts can be enormously helpful. If you want to lose weight, particularly fat, seeking guidance from a registered dietitian or a nutritionist can be very beneficial, Herrington says. Similarly, if you want to build on weight loss to achieve more defined abs, consulting with a certified sports trainer can aid you in developing a workout regimen that will help you achieve your goals, Singer says.
To do it: Lie on your back with your hands interlaced behind head, knees bent ,and feet hip-width apart on the floor. Inhale and lift your chest towards your knees, bringing your shoulders and head off the floor, maintaining a neutral pelvis (keeping it parallel to the floor). Exhale and rotate to the right side, and then exhale again rotating even further, lifting a little higher. Next, inhale and lift as you return to the center and repeat to the other side. Do 8-10 reps per side. There are thousands of trainers and infomercials hawking quick, effortless programs that are guaranteed to give users abs in mere minutes a day — as long as they buy an expensive piece of equipment or DVD set, of course. For some people with impeccable genetics or bulletproof diets, that might just be enough to make their core ripple with muscle. But most bodies just aren’t built that way.

If you want to get fit faster and burn more calories in less time, don't spend all your time in the so-called fat-burning zone. Instead, add some High Intensity Training (HIT) to your workouts a couple times each week. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, you can burn more calories in less time with short, high intensity exercise. You can also boost your overall cardiovascular fitness with this type of training. Be sure to slowly ramp up your intensity, however, or you could wind up with an injury.​

Unless you are on steroids, training 4 times a week is the sweet spot for building muscle. You’ll need resting days for your muscles to grow. One day of training followed by one day of rest is the ideal set up for muscle growth but since there are 7 days in a week, you can train either for 4 days or 3 days a week. Training for 3 days a week is too lazy for a lofty goal like getting six pack abs so it’s best to train 4 days a week and arrange your consecutive days of training to target different muscle groups in your body. Sure, some muscle groups will inevitably be trained for 2 days in a row but that’s a minor issue when you consider that you have 3 whole days of resting in a single week.
Try adding four or five to the end of your workout to challenge your core a little more, or turn them into a standalone workout—try doing 12-15 reps of each exercise and then repeating the circuit (of four or five exercises) three to four times, to start. If you feel tension in your lower back during any of these exercises, stop and reset, making sure your abs are really engaged and that your back is not arched. You can also try starting with fewer reps. If you still feel discomfort, skip that exercise and try a different that allows you to keep your spine in a safer position. (It's also helpful to read up on which abs exercises tend to be irritating for lower-back issues beforehand if that's a concern for you.)
I’ve had several friends ask me what I did and what they could do to get fit so I decided to nail down everything in this detailed article. I’ve also tried to bust a lot of ‘six pack myths’ in the process by backing them up with scientific explanations and relevant links wherever possible. Whether you’re fat, skinny or somewhere in the middle, I’m sure you’ll manage to takeaway something after reading this!
Thankfully, if you’re already reasonably fit, just a few tweaks to your routine here, a few modifications to your diet there, and you’ll be well on your way to shredded stomach glory. To that end, we’ve gathered up the best tips and tricks—expert-approved advice to ensure that, in no time, you’ll have the sculpted abs of your dreams. And for some core-specific moves, check out The Best Workouts For Getting That Summer Six-Pack.
Every beer you drink has about 150 calories. And most of those calories are “empty”—or, in other words, nutritionally useless. If you’re a regular beer drinker, you could be consuming hundreds or thousands or entirely useless calories each week. Those add up fast. A good alternative libation would be tequila, which has less than half the calories per alcohol volume—and zero carbs. If you must throw back a bottle or two, though, be sure you’re drinking any of the 30 Best Post-Workout Beers.

Carbs and Glycemic Index (GI)— Short for the term ‘carbohydrates’, carbs are basically the fuel (again, energy) your body runs on. Bread, Roti, Rice, Sugar and even Vegetables are all forms of carbs. Most normal food we eat typically have some carbs in them. Now if you eat too many carbs, they get stored as fat. You want consume just enough carbs to get by and simultaneously assist your muscle tissues to grow through food. The solution is to eat ‘good carbs’ or low Glycemic Index foods (veggies, brown rice, oats, quinoa). The Glycemic Index(GI) is a scale that measures how close a food is to sugar. The lower the GI for that food, the longer it takes to digest, you remain full for longer, it releases energy slowly and doesn’t spike your insulin and blood sugar levels drastically, thus not hindering fat loss much. As a rule of thumb, low-GI foods are good foods while high-GI foods aren’t.

After having achieved this goal, there’s a seemingly big void in my life. I intend to fill it up with another ambitious goal instead of more training, though the latter is far more tempting! I find that training, staying fit, and eating right fits in very well with my lifestyle. I intend to keep it that way while being content with slow but lean and steady gains over time. I do intend on dabbling in boxing and advanced callisthenics in the future.
Breakfast (9.30AM) — If you workout in the evening, nothing (IF). If you workout in the morning and it’s your cardio day, still nothing. On weight training days, 1 serving of Steel Cut Oats (why they’re better than regular oats) and skimmed milk, topped with some nuts and cinnamon powder. It’s imperative you replenish your muscle glycogen with some carbs post workout. I would usually cook 5–6 servings of oats on the weekend and store them in the refrigerator, using them through the week.
“I alternate between all-out effort sprints (30 to 60 seconds) and walk/jog as a recovery until I feel fatigued. Intensity is key. Abs work as stabilizing muscles during a sprint, so the harder I push myself the harder my abs will work! Plus, there’s no equipment required, and I get a high calorie burn and full-body workout done in very little time. (I tell myself I can do anything for 30 seconds.) Depending on how I feel, I’ll either add this to the end of a routine or make it my entire workout, two to three times a week.” —Suzanne Cover, @suzannecover Aerobic exercise is one of the safest ways to burn lots of calories over a long period of time while you maintain heart health and tone muscles. Simply modifying your diet or reducing your calories without exercise will lead to initial weight loss, but you'll likely reach a plateau and you may also lose muscle. A personal exercise plan that has a solid base of cardiovascular exercise will help you maintain exercise for the long-term, help you get past weight loss plateaus and can help you maintain your muscle mass. So get out for a nice long walk, a hike, a bike ride or a swim on a regular basis. Park the car and walk for most of your errands and just get moving more often.
Then, when it comes to sculpting those abs of your dreams, it’s not as simple as doing endless crunches. “Developing a six-pack requires more than just working the ‘pretty’ muscles that you can see,” Fitzgerald says. “The deeper, transverse core muscles must be strengthened first to create a strong, solid base—without that, only doing crunches can actually make your belly stick out more. Nobody wants that.”
Do it: Lay face up on the floor with arms straight above your shoulders. To start, bring your knees directly over your hips and bend at the knee so that your calf forms a 90-degree angle with your thigh. Next, simultaneously lower your left arm above your head while straightening your right leg and sending it towards the floor. Pause, return to the starting position, and then repeat on the opposite side. Do 14 alternating reps to complete one set. 1. Consume fewer calories than you're burning every day. Job one when trying to achieve a six-pack is to lose weight, which means expending more calories than you take in on a daily basis, says Dani Singer, a certified fitness nutrition specialist and certified personal trainer in Baltimore. He's the director of Fit2Go Personal Training. To optimize losing fat and not muscle, you need to be in a caloric deficit, eat adequate protein and strength train, he says. "The source of your food will affect health, but will have zero effect on your body composition," Singer says. "It's the total calories and macronutrients [protein, fat and carbs] from your foods that will determine how your body looks."
Start lying faceup on the mat. Lift head, shoulder blades, and feet off floor as you extend arms straight out. Neck should be relaxed, not strained. This is your hollow hold. Next, engage abs to lift chest towards legs as you bend knees so that body forms a V shape and shins are parallel to floor. Slowly lower back down to a hollow hold position and repeat.

Lie down on a mat and place your hands behind your head, gently supporting your head with your fingers without pulling. Bring your knee up to your chest, while rotating your upper body to meet your knee with the elbow of your opposite arm (see photo). The opposite leg will go straight out. Switch to the opposite side, “cycling” the legs. Do one to three sets of 12 to 16 repetitions each.

I also advise you to take weekly pictures of your body so that you are able to observe how your body changes. You’ll not notice the daily changes solely by looking in the mirror as the changes will be too gradual to be noticed by daily observation but they will be visible when they accumulate. The good thing is that you don’t have to wait until you get six-pack abs to notice major changes in your body. When I was just 5 weeks into my bodyweight training routine, people around me had started complimenting my physique. Seeing your body changing and receiving compliments on your physique will keep you motivated to stay on track.
Trainer tip: You know planks, right? It’s easy to go through the motions here. Don’t do it. “The key is to squeeze your entire body—quads, glutes, core, back, and fists—as tight as possible while taking diaphoretic breathes throughout the hold,” says Wealth. No matter how many times you’ve done it, this exercise is as difficult as you’re willing to make it.

AN ONLINE SEARCH FOR how to get abs without dieting yields a raft of eye-popping results: There are YouTube videos with instructions, and a piece on the dating site Match.com promises advice. Want to achieve ripped abs by eating pizza and ice cream? There's an article on that on a healthy eating website. A piece in a fitness magazine describes the 10 best foods for flat abs.

Trainer tip: You know planks, right? It’s easy to go through the motions here. Don’t do it. “The key is to squeeze your entire body—quads, glutes, core, back, and fists—as tight as possible while taking diaphoretic breathes throughout the hold,” says Wealth. No matter how many times you’ve done it, this exercise is as difficult as you’re willing to make it.

Kneel on a mat on all fours with your hands directly under your shoulders. Stretch your legs back one at a time to come into plank position (the “up” part of a push-up); engage your ab muscles. Your body should be long and straight; don’t let your hips sag or lift your butt too high. Imagine there’s a seat belt tightening around your waist, drawing your lower-ab muscles inward.

If you’re wondering what my motivation was, here goes — About 2 years ago, I came across this article — Debarghya Das-My Transformation: How I lost 66 pounds and gained a 6 pack in 8 months. Oh boy, I was zapped. I told myself this is what I’m going to do, but in my own way and the best way I can. Looking back, I think I managed to stay true to myself. I’ve been incredibly lucky to connect with him today and tell him how much his journey inspired me everyday. I probably wouldn’t be writing this today if it wasn’t for him. Thank you deedy!

To do it: Stand with your feet planted 3-4 feet apart, toes slightly turned out, hands on your hips. Lower into a plie by bending your knees out over your toes and lowering your hips directly underneath your shoulders. Then, as your straighten back up, slowly lift the right knee up towards the right shoulder. As you go back into the plie, slowly return the foot to the floor. Be sure to move at a very controlled pace to really engage the obliques the entire time—on the way up and on the way down. Do 10 repetitions on the right side, then another 10 repetitions on the left side for a total of 20.
The crunch is the most popular abs exercise because anyone can do it. But that doesn't mean it's the best exercise for training your middle. "Crunches flex your trunk," says David Jack, owner of ActivPrayer in Phoenix, Arizona and creator of Men's Health MA40 Workout. "But the main function of your core is to prevent movement and resist force through your torso." 6. Seek guidance from experts. As with many health issues, getting assistance from experts can be enormously helpful. If you want to lose weight, particularly fat, seeking guidance from a registered dietitian or a nutritionist can be very beneficial, Herrington says. Similarly, if you want to build on weight loss to achieve more defined abs, consulting with a certified sports trainer can aid you in developing a workout regimen that will help you achieve your goals, Singer says. To do it: Stand with your feet planted 3-4 feet apart, toes slightly turned out, hands on your hips. Lower into a plie by bending your knees out over your toes and lowering your hips directly underneath your shoulders. Then, as your straighten back up, slowly lift the right knee up towards the right shoulder. As you go back into the plie, slowly return the foot to the floor. Be sure to move at a very controlled pace to really engage the obliques the entire time—on the way up and on the way down. Do 10 repetitions on the right side, then another 10 repetitions on the left side for a total of 20.